Well, Sona is deep in the midst of night sweats. You know what that means: Cloooooooomiiiiiiiiiiiid! (In my head, I said that in Oprah’s voice.)

(photos from when we had our last getaway–to NOLA–before Finn was born)

She went in for a water ultrasound last Thursday. That was the one where they checked to ensure that there weren’t any physiological anomalies preventing pregnancy: scar tissue, polyps, etc. Luckily, everything looked good! So, the doc called in prescriptions for Clomid and Progesterone (Sona’s was a bit lower than they’d like to see).

We were a little stressed about the timing, per usual, because after asking around, it seemed like a lot of women had started Clomid much sooner. The general consensus was that most started between CD3 (cycle day)-CD5. Sona was on CD8. However, her cycles are irregular and generally longer than 28 days. Therefore, we’re hoping that her CD8 is kind of like other folk’s CD5. And the doc was still insistent that the timing is good, as Sona usually ovulates between CD 15-19.

Anyway, I went to Walgreens to pick up the prescriptions having NO idea what they would cost without insurance. I think we were both expecting a bill of around $200, but it was only $30. That may be the only time in this whole process when we’re surprised by how cheap something is.

Enter, our sperm bank order history:

That doesn’t even include our most recent order, which was placed on Sunday night. Two vials. $1900. I would total it up for you all, but then I might have to throw my laptop against the wall. So, you do the math.

I don’t know what our donor’s name is–and, of course, I feel like we owe him our lives–but I sure hope he’s out there somewhere, driving a Tesla, living his best life.

(If you are new to us and haven’t read about how we chose our donor, you can catch up on that story here.)

While we’re talking money, we also got our first bill from our fertility clinic. They waste NO time. I mean, I think they stamped that shit as we walked out the door. Ah, well. Can’t blame them. The hustle is real.

This is all to say that we are hopefully set for a couple of inseminations before the week ends. Tomorrow morning, Sona goes in for the ultrasound to see how her follicles are maturing and how large they are. Depending on what they find, she will do the HCG trigger shot tomorrow night, which should prompt ovulation.

(Remember, the doc wants to see at least one follicle that is 18mm. The bigger it is, the closer Sona is to ovulating. If it’s so big that it looks like she’s ready to go, they may have her trigger Wednesday morning, instead. If she has a few that are large, which happens with Clomid, they will let us know that there is a high risk for multiples and ask us whether, knowing that info, we want to move forward with insemination this month. After that, I’ll begin drinking. Like A LOT.)

The next question is: how soon after the trigger shot do we do insemination #1? Since we’ve basically been crowd sourcing this whole pregnancy, I asked that question on Instagram, trying to get a sense of what others did. We got lots of responses that generally ranged from 24-36 hours, but 36 hours seemed to be the more popular answer–and the one that resulted in a lot of pregnancies. That timing is our biggest source of stress, just as it was before we were working with the fertility clinic. What if Sona ovulates right away and we miss the window, essentially wasting $1200 worth of IUIs and $1900 worth of sperm? Sona is going to grill the doc about this at tomorrow’s ultrasound, and they will make the decision about when to trigger based on the status of the follicles.

So, we’ll do the first IUI within that 24-36 hour window and the other around 12 -24 hours later. I’m unclear about whether or not they do another ultrasound in that time period, but I don’t think they plan to. It just seems like it’d make sense to check to see whether ovulation has actually occurred before moving forward with the second IUI, but I’ll try to trust that the experts know what they are doing.

Everyone keeps reminding us that this isn’t an exact science and that, even with thousands of dollars worth of fertility clinic bills and ultrasounds galore and hormone-altering medications, it is still just a guessing game. That’s pretty infuriating. Nature: 1; Science: 0.

The truth is this: we are going all in on this month. We’re spending around $4,000 (after having already spent thousands more). We’re committing to numerous trips to the fertility clinic, making Sona late to work several days throughout the process. We’re doing two inseminations to increase our chances. We chose to jump straight to meds, even though we had the option not to. We are playing every single card.

Of course, what that also means is that we are 100x more invested in this month’s IUIs resulting in a successful pregnancy. We are terrified of it not working and of having to go through this indefinitely. We are well aware that, while our fertility clinic could afford to have us go through this process for months and months, our bank account and our hearts could not. There are some things that have definite boundaries and breaking points, and we are hoping that we won’t have to experience a breach.

The amount of stress and anxiety–most of which is internalized–can’t be quantified.  There some debts that haunt you in ways that financial troubles can’t. We are doing everything in our power to make our family of three a family of four. But only so much is in our power.

Dear Santa: all I want for Christmas are gift cards to the fertility clinic.

What I mean to say is: we had our first fertility consultation, today. It lasted nearly two hours. So, I don’t even know where to begin. I guess I’ll just start at the beginning.

This fertility doctor has come highly recommended by a ton of other lesbian couples in Chicago–and by the practitioner who did our last two rounds of IUI at the LGBTQ clinic. We always said that we would give unmedicated, unassisted IUIs a few months and, if they didn’t take, we’d move on to a fertility specialist to–hopefully–get the job done.

Part of that decision was motivated by the fact that, when they did labs at the LGBTQ clinic, Sona’s AMH (anti-mullerian hormone) levels came back “low.” The AMH level indicates how many eggs you’ve got left in your little ovarian bank. The older you get, the lower the number. Sona’s is 4.1, and we were told that was on the low end of normal, which worried us a bit. Of course, we consulted Google, and we found many (barely credible) sources that seemed to indicate the same thing: 4.1 is low for a 36 year old woman. Turns out, that’s wrong. (More on that in a bit.)

We’ve had today’s appointment for over a month, and we figured that if we happened to get preggo during this last cycle, we’d just cancel it. That didn’t happen.

So, today, we both left work early and met at the clinic, which happened to be right across the street from one of our favorite coffee shops (shout out: Wormhole) and next door to some of our favorite sushi burritos. That has to be good juju, right?!

The space is uber posh, but I guess when you are making thousands of dollars per client, you can afford some swanky furniture and a couple of potted orchids.

To their credit, I’ll say that they make a great first impression. Every single staff member greeted us warmly–and by name. They were exceedingly prompt and professional. We never felt rushed. It was an organized and well-orchestrated appointment, complete with a choreography of insurance experts and nurses and, finally, the doctor. And they had free snacks! (We might have stolen pretzels and a granola bar for daycare pick-up.)

The insurance expert was the opening act, and while they would probably argue that they want the financial aspect of the exchange to be transparent from the get-go, I would argue that they want to get the biggest blow out of the way quickly, allowing you plenty of time to faint, cry, or leave before they bother going through the rest of their performance.

We’d asked around, and we’d heard that most folks had gotten the majority of their IUI treatments mostly covered by their plans. Since I have BCBS PPO, I thought it wouldn’t be an issue, and we were modestly hopeful that we’d have a lot of the process covered. WRONG.

Turns out, employers get to decide how much fertility coverage they want to offer their employees, and my employer has elected to only cover “the diagnosis of infertility.” Basically, today’s consult and bloodwork SHOULD be covered in full. From here on out, every single thing will be paid for out of pocket.

It was not the best way to begin the consult, and Sona and I were panicking a little inside.

After that, we met with the nurse practitioner, who led most of the consult. We walked through everything: Sona’s labwork from a couple of months ago, our attempts to get pregnant this time, how we got pregnant with Finn, our goals for conception, etc. The NP was a great listener, and she helped us understand a lot of medically-relevant stuff that no one had bothered to explain before. It was the first time we felt like someone knew more about getting pregnant than we did.

For starters, they are THRILLED with Sona’s AMH level, which they actually classify as high for her age. Girl has eggs for days. Remember, she has a 4.1, and they ideally want clients trying to conceive to have a 1-3. So, when held to their standard, Sona is super fertile.

She also explained a lot of possible reasons why we may not have gotten pregnant so far: Sona may have a polyp or a fibroid that’s blocking the egg, there may be scar tissue from her previous pregnancy, her progesterone levels may be a tad low–and the list goes on. While there aren’t any glaring concerns right now, we are going to do what they call a water ultrasound to check and make sure the pipes are running clean. We’re also going to do another series of ultrasounds to see how many viable eggs she’s working with each cycle.

The biggest thing we have to decide is whether or not we want to do a medicated or unmedicated cycle to begin. Do we try to go au naturel, using bloodwork and ultrasounds to better time insemination? Or do we just say “Screw it! Let’s go all in.” and immediately begin using medication to better control timing?

There are three medications we could use:

1. Progesterone: The NP said that progesterone is the hormone that makes the uterus lining fuller and more sticky. “It’s like a fluffy pillow covered in honey,” she said. The stickiness makes it a little more likely that the embryo will, well, stick. It makes the uterine environment more desirable.
2. Clomid: This is a follicle stimulant. It would increase the chance of pregnancy by 10-15%, as Clomid better preps healthy eggs for ovulation. Of course, it could over-stimulate, and that might result in multiples (KILL ME NOW). Also, while it increases fertility for the first three months of use, research indicates that it begins decreasing fertility after that. So, it is not without side effects, including some crazy mood swings.
3. HCG: This is the pregnancy hormone, often called a “trigger shot.” Using it makes it much easier to time when ovulation is going to happen, as the shot actually triggers you to ovulate.

We can choose to use one, none, or any combination of the above drugs. Again, it’s important to note that, as of now, we aren’t actually “struggling with fertility.” Sona isn’t infertile; she’s overly fertile. We’re pretty sure that timing is the problem, as I’ve discussed at length in previous posts.

The other issue is, of course, cost. These things all cost money, and insurance won’t be helping out. An unmedicated IUI cycle, complete with ultrasounds and bloodwork, will run us $800 plus sperm. Either way, we’re likely going to do two vials of sperm each time, giving us better odds. That’s another $1800 a month.

A medicated cycle will cost around $1200. So, that’s really only a difference of $400.

$2600 for an unmedicated cycle or $3000 for a medicated one. PER MONTH. Either way, we’re looking at a 10-20% chance of pregnancy per cycle. (Either way, we are going to be broke as a joke.)

So, yeah. It’s going to be a tough haul financially, but we’re just crossing our fingers that it happens quickly, and we won’t have to do multiple months. Because truly, I don’t know how long we could do this for–financially, emotionally, or otherwise.

What I do realize, though, is that we are privileged that this is even an option we can entertain. And I wish that this were an option that insurance companies made available to a wider range of couples.

Still, we left feeling rejuvenated. I’m an academic and Sona is science-minded. To both of us, knowledge is power; we feel much more empowered, now.

Next steps: two appointments for ultrasounds and bloodwork next week!

(Our pre-appointment selfie.)

Today, it is cloudy with 0% chance of pregnancy. We are 14 DPO, and we just got a BFN (big fat negative) on a test, this morning.

We knew this was coming. The fact that we waited the full 14 days to test is testament to that. Usually, when we are excited/hopeful, we sneak a test in a few days early.

If you’re keeping track, you know that this is our fourth cycle attempt for this pregnancy. We tried for two months earlier in the year, two months just recently. We’ve had five inseminations, using five vials of sperm. We’ve taken probably 8-10 pregnancy tests–all negative. Sona has tested for ovulation nearly 50 times. We’re about $7,000.00-$8,000.00 in, so far.

So, yeah. We knew this was coming. We were pretty sure we weren’t pregnant. We figured the timing was off. We kept mum about the possibility of pregnancy for two weeks, barely saying a word about it to one another, figuring that the more we talked about it, the more it would sting when it didn’t come to fruition.

As anyone will tell you about anything sucky: just because you know it’s coming, doesn’t make it any easier. We have our first appointment with a fertility doctor on Wednesday, even though we’d both secretly hoped we would be able to cancel, calling to say, “Sorry! We got pregnant. No need to come in.” But I think we’re ready to get some answers, eliminate the guessing game, and just get this done.

We’re a little uncertain about what comes ahead: the costs, the stress, the time commitment of having to do daily ultrasounds and regular blood tests. (Sona is really stressed about how she’s going to juggle that and her work schedule, which is inflexible.) But we’re going to keep on moving, and we’ll keep you posted.

This morning, after testing, we took the train to a nearby farmer’s market. It was a crisp fall morning–my favorite. We bought 10lbs of apples, two croissants, and a couple of smoothies. We took Finn to the park. We ate biscuits and gravy as the rain, which we just missed, began.

On the platform earlier, as we waited for the train, an old lady watched Finn, commenting on how beautiful he was. “He needs a little sister,” she said. “She’d be beautiful, too.” Sona and I just looked at each other. We didn’t have to say anything. We both knew what the other was thinking.

We’ve received a lot of supremely kind and generous feedback since we’ve started sharing our attempts to conceive baby number two. It means a lot that so many folks have expressed their well wishes, crossed their fingers, or–in many cases–shared their own stories, which are at once very different and eerily similar. Through these conversations, there are a few questions that keep coming up. So, I thought I’d take some time to answer them. Here it goes.

Is Sona pregnant, yet?

I get the impression that some folks assume this blog series is like a serial podcast–one with a predetermined end that has already been established but not yet revealed to the audience. I wish that were the case.

Hopefully, eventually, this will culminate in a pregnancy–and a healthy bambino. For now, though, I can tell you that, even though I’m going back to catch everyone up on the past several months, we are–as I said in my first post–still trying to conceive. If you follow us on Instagram, you know that we share a lot via InstaStory. You probably also know that we did an insemination 9 days ago. (We went InstaStory-crazy that night and shared a lot of info.) In hindsight, we think we likely got the timing wrong by a day, but we will test for pregnancy at 14 DPO (days past ovulation) and keep you posted on the results.

As of right this second, there is a tiny chance that Sona is pregnant, but we aren’t very hopeful.

How does all of this lesbian baby-making stuff work, anyway?

Okay, so few people have phrased the question quite that way, but the majority of responses and/or questions we’ve received have made it quite clear that folks don’t really understand how: 1. conception happens, generally and 2. the options available to lesbians TTC.

We have tackled both of those things via InstaStory, but I’ll review.

First, it is important to understand the difference between ICI and IUI. This has been a great source of confusion among folks, even other lesbians. (Hell, it was all a great source of confusion to us when we first started this process. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to write this blog. But more on that, later.)

So, ICI is intracervical insemination. It is the closest to sexual intercourse, as the sperm is placed into the vaginal canal, close to the cervix. The hope is, of course, that the strong swimmers make their way through the cervical opening and into the uterus.

IUI, intrauterine insemination, actually places the sperm directly into the reproductive tract by going through the cervical opening and near the uterus. The chances of pregnancy are slightly higher with IUI, as you’re already getting the little swimmers through the first door, if you will. But this is also considered a medical procedure. It can be difficult to get through the cervical opening, and it could potentially introduce bacteria into the cervix. IUIs are typically performed in-office by medical professionals; ICIs are typically performed at home.

Also, the sperm you use must be specific to the procedure you are doing. IUI sperm is washed and free of all ejaculate fluid (I hope I never have to say that phrase again), as that can cause an infection inside of the cervix.

So, that’s your sperm education for the day.

Essentially, when lesbians decide that they want to have a biological child (i.e. not adopt), these are the options:

1. Go with a known donor. Do an ICI with fresh sperm.
2. Go with a known donor. Have sperm washed. Do an IUI with fresh sperm.
3. Go with a sperm bank. Order either ICI or IUI-specific sperm. Do corresponding procedure.
4. Do a procedure called reciprocal IVF. Harvest egg from mom #1. Fertilize egg. Implant in mom #2.

Because we didn’t want to know our donor and because we couldn’t afford reciprocal IVF (which I’m not actually sure we’d care to do, anyway), we chose option #3. Because there is a slightly higher chance of pregnancy with IUI, we decided to go that route.

Let’s look at a nice little infographic that gives some good stats about IUI, including the small chance of success each cycle and the high cost.

The low success rates per cycle (our docs said expect it to take at least 5-6 for a healthy and fertile woman) is almost entirely due to errors in timing. Timing is EVERYTHING with IUI, and it is what drives those of us who are TTC mad.

I’m not going to go too much into this, but here is my short–and rather unscientific–explanation. Frozen sperm is only viable for a maximum of 24 hours, but a lot of studies indicate that viability rapidly decreases after 12. A woman’s egg can only live 12-24 hours after ovulation, but the older you get, the shorter that window. There’s a good chance Sona’s egg needs to be fertilized within the first 12 hours.

Are you doing the math? That means that we have to have the 12-hour peak of sperm viability overlap with the 12-hour window in which Sona’s egg is happy and healthy. TWELVE HOURS.

This is why women take their daily temperatures and check the consistency of cervical fluid and pay attention to all signs of whether or not their bodies are ovulating. There are ovulation tests that predict when your LH surges, and that generally indicates that ovulation will occur with in 12-36 hours. However, do you see that even that window is too wide? Even within that, there is so much room for error.

To complicate things further, we believe that Sona is ovulating either BEFORE the tests indicate an LH surge (maybe her levels are low?) or very soon after. If she’s not testing 5 times a day, it is potentially very easy for us to miss when we window is. And we don’t think we’ve been able to nail it down, yet.

Fresh sperm can live for up to FIVE DAYS inside of a woman. (Start charging rent for that shit, ladies.) So, that’s why women are much, much more likely to get pregnant if they use a known donor and a fresh, never-frozen specimen. Their window is huge compared to those of us doing IUI with frozen sperm.  12 hours vs. 5 days.

Why are you sharing such personal information on this blog?

This is the one people have been afraid to ask, but I know a lot of folks are thinking it–even close family and friends. The varying levels of discomfort with our sharing our story are evident.

I started this blog, initially, for three reasons: First, I want Finn to have a recorded history of his life. I want him to know our journey, and I know that–at some point that’s closer than I’d like to admit–we will want to relive these memories, ourselves.

Second, I am a writer. I love stories. I believe in the power of stories. It is in my soul. I have been writing since I was a kid. I majored in English in college. I studied Poetry in graduate school. I am an English professor, now. Whether through fiction or poems or photographs or blog posts, I have always told stories. It is how I process the world. It is how I cope. It is the thing most dear to me in the world.

Lastly, as I’ve already alluded to several times, the stories I read on the internet–stories about families, blogs about motherhood, about trying to conceive–are almost always from the perspective of white, upper-class, mostly Mormon (right, tho?), hetero-normative couples. There are some stories that aren’t being told, and I want our own to help fill that void. I want to normalize our kind of family for everyone who doesn’t understand what it means to be a two-mom household, and I want to give other families like us the chance to see themselves represented. When we first started this process, I desperately sought that, and it was hard to find.

And now, I have a new, albeit lofty, goal: I want to demystify the conception process for same-sex, mainly lesbian, couples. I don’t want women to have to spend hours and hours doing online research, only to get half-true answers on discussion forums. Sona and I were so ignorant when this all started. We couldn’t find the answers we were looking for easily, but now we know a lot about the process. Often, we know more than the medical professionals who have helped us. That’s empowering, but it is also discouraging. We’ve learned to advocate for ourselves and for our family, and we want other same-sex couples to feel like they have the tools to do the same.

Last week, I let you all in on a secret: we have started trying to conceive (TTC) baby #2.

(This photo is actually from the day we got pregnant with Finn.)

This is the second in what I imagine will be a long series of posts (though, hopefully not TOO long) about this journey.

In that last post, I mentioned that we have been TTC since this past February. That was both true and not true. Let me explain.

Around the holidays last year, Sona and I began seriously talking about baby #2, which we always knew was going to be part of our future. So, the conversations were never “Should we have another baby?” They were more “When should be begin this process, again?”

(Okay, sometimes when life was particularly rocky, as I’ve alluded to before, the conversations were about whether or not we should have another baby. But mostly, they were always about when.)

Since Sona was 35 at the time–36, now–we knew that the longer we waited, the harder it would be. We’ve also always been motivated to start sooner rather than later because of two other factors: 1. We want Finn to have a sibling who is relatively close to him in age–a playmate. 2. We want the baby/toddler years to be over ASAP. Neither of us are particularly interested in drawing out that misery. I mean bliss. (I mean misery.)

We also have always planned our attempts to conceive around my school schedule. I’m the one who has the opportunity to take the longest maternity leave, but that leave needs to be aligned with my academic semesters. If Sona has a baby mid-semester, I have no choice but to take off the full semester, should I want to be home, and I’d essentially waste 2-3 months of maternity time. I want to maximize the amount of time I get off with our second baby; I had 6 months at home with Finn, and those were some of the best months of my life.

So, our goal is to try to time it where the baby comes in either May or December, allowing me to have as much time off as possible (1 full semester + the 3 summer months). Of course, the universe has other plans.

Last fall, Sona started charting, tracking her morning temperatures, her ovulation cycles, and a range of other symptoms, prepping for an early-2017 IUI. We were all set to go when we found out that the doctor who did our last inseminations–when we got preggo with Finn–no longer performs the procedure. I talked about this, already.

When  I ended my last post, I might have given the impression that we were going to try doing IUIs at home. Well, we were, and then we quickly realized that it was going to be a very bad idea. I had NO idea what I was doing. I ordered a random assortment of “supplies” from Amazon, including pipettes that ended up being for HORSE INSEMINATIONS. Horses, people. Those things wouldn’t have fit in Sona’s mouth, let alone her cervix. We had to find a pro, and a pro I was not.

We scrambled to find someone else, went with a recommendation, and ended up going to a posh OBGYN practice in the ‘burbs. The doctor was nice, but his hours were really inflexible. Sona can’t quit her job to get pregnant. We also can’t chance missing her ovulation window because our doctor has limited hours. It just wasn’t ideal, but any other options we explored (women clinics, LGBTQ clinics) were going to take too long to get us in, and we were only two weeks away from what we hoped would be our first insemination.

So, we went with it. We did our first insemination in February with one vial of sperm. Finn came with us, and we were all together for that first appointment. We were hopeful.

As you’ve probably gleaned, Sona didn’t get pregnant that first time. She takes each negative pregnancy test pretty hard, despite the science-minded part of her knowing that chances are relatively slim each time. Still, each month wears on us.

At about that same time, our marriage wasn’t great. To be honest, I can’t even remember what the problem was, I just know that we were not in a good place. Like, I think it was one of the darkest periods we’ve experienced in our relationship. Finn was working through chronic ear infections. Teething was awful. We had all just had a two-week long run-in with the Norovirus. And the stress of TTC–and all of the disorganized chaos that accompanied it–really didn’t help. We were struggling big time.

Still, we pushed forward, and we decided to try again in March. Sona wanted to get an ultrasound to help us better predict ovulation for that month, which the office offered to do. (I should say this: as great of a practice as they were, they were pretty clueless about guiding us through this process. That has been the case for every single doctor we’ve interacted with. We’ve been the ones taking the reigns, suggesting care plans, proactively advocating for what we needed.)

Just in case she was ovulating soon, she took the tank of sperm into the office for her ultrasound appointment, although we knew she was likely 4-5 days away from her window. She got checked in. Put the sperm in the office. Went to the ultrasound room. Found out that she was 3-4 days away from ovulating. Came back. And, to her horror, saw that the nurse had taken the sperm out of the tank and thawed it while she was gone. $1200 (sperm + doctor visits) down the drain. Her heart sank.

Of course, at that point, she had no choice: she had to do an IUI right then and there. So, she did. The doctor apologized. Said it was still possible that she’d get pregnant. But we knew she wouldn’t. The window is already SO slim, and the insemination was about 4 days too early. The sperm would be dead before her body even thought of releasing the egg.

It was a tough blow. It compounded the stress and anxiety we already felt, and it made us question whether or not we were doing the right thing. It added weight onto our already heavy marriage. So, when she didn’t get pregnant, which we knew was likely, we decided to stop. All signs seemed to point in the same direction; the universe was telling us that it wasn’t the right time. We listened.

A week later, we  traveled to Italy together, leaving Finn at home with my parents, and it revived us in a lot of ways. We tried to make lemonade (limoncello?) out of lemons, and we relished in the fact that Sona could eat all of the cured meat, soft cheese, and drink all of the bubbly that she wanted.

We tabled the baby-making conversation for several months, although Sona kept tracking. Since we were trying to stick to the whole time-it-with-Danielle’s-academic-semesters thing, stopping meant that we had to wait a full 4-5 months before we started to try again. Honestly, it relieved a lot of stress–stress on Sona, stress on our marriage, financial stress. It gave us a chance to re-group.

In August, we started trying again. More about that, later.

And it’s probably not exactly what you think.

A couple of posts ago, I lamented about how difficult marriage can be, admitting that if we ever decided to have a second baby, I’m not sure our relationship would survive it. The truth is, I was kind of speaking from experience, but I just wasn’t ready to say that, yet.

Sona and I started trying to get pregnant with baby #2 at the beginning of this year. Our first attempt was in February. Below, is the one-day-I-will-post-this-blog-slash-diary-entry that I wrote on my phone about a week before our first insemination, lying next to Sona while she slept, that I planned to post when we got pregnant, which I assumed–naively–would happen rather quickly. We got pregnant with Finn on the second try, after all. I was excited and anxious and hopeful, and I couldn’t sleep because of it all. Now, I read through the damn-near exuberant tone of what I wrote back in February, and it makes me cringe a little.

Here is the box of donor specimen (appreciate the sterility of that language?) that arrived on our doorstep back in February:

Fast forward 8 months, and I’m a little disappointed to report that no, we are still not pregnant. Yes, we are still trying.

Sona and I have thought long and hard about whether or not we want to share this process. Only a handful of people even know that we’ve been trying. Sona had a lot of reservations about spreading the news, mostly do to her own anxiety and internalized doubts about whether or not she will be able to conceive again. I would never push her to share, especially if it added more stress to an already stressful process. As time has gone on, though, I think she’s grown a bit weary. The testing and temping and charting and everything else that goes along with trying to conceive has tired her out, and now she doesn’t really care who knows; she only cares about getting pregnant.

So, I’m going to share our journey, and I have a lot of catching up to do. Let’s start here.

February 18, 2017
Mission: Give Finn a Sibling is a go, y’all.

Today, it feels like shit is getting real. I mean, it’s been real for several weeks, now, as we’ve known that February was going to be the month we pull the trigger for quite some time. (See what I did, there?)

We are trying to plan a second pregnancy around my teaching schedule, which will likely backfire. Still, we’ve conceptualized our preggo plans, working around semester-long chunks of time. So, if we put things off any longer, it’d have to be for another 5 months or so, and Sona’s ovaries ain’t no spring chickens. (Sorry, honey.)

Today, we took our first concrete steps toward bebé deux: First, we got all of our ducks in a row with our sperm bank. All of our forms had expired, and we needed to update a bunch of info, as Sona’s last name has changed, and we’ve moved, since our last order.

I’ll place the order for our little swimmers, tomorrow, and they will be here in 48 hrs. Luckily, Monday is a holiday, and I’ll be home to sign for them. Else, we’d planned to ask our upstairs neighbors whether or not they had any problem signing for a giant “bio material” box stamped “keep frozen.”

There is truly nothing more surreal than paying an exorbitant price to order a Tic-Tac sized vial of sperm that may, if you’re lucky, grow up to sass you and eat you out of house and home, one day. It was a disembodying experience, last time, and it is this time, too.

Second, we continued to deliberate over who exactly would perform the IUI, as we got the delightful news that our OB, who did or last IUI and oversaw our prenatal care, no longer does the procedure.

That news derailed us quite a bit. We felt prepared, had scheduled a pre-preggo appointment and blood work, and then Sona got to the appointment only for our doc to tell her that–for BS liabilities–our whole health system has stopped doing in-office inseminations. AWESOME.

We thought we had it all figured out.

That news came a few weeks ago, and ever since, I’ve reached out to every viable option: midwives, health centers, LGBT organizations, etc. They’ve all been dead-ends, in that the options presented to us involved weeks worth of workshops and consultations and preliminary visits–which we’d already done and which, doing again, would cost us a ton of extra money and set us way off schedule. The Fertility Center of IL seemed like an obvious choice, but a quick phone call revealed that our monthly costs for the procedure itself–excluding $1000 worth of sperm–would be around $2000. We’d paid $400, before. $3000/month to get a well-vetted Tic-Tac squirted inside of you in a procedure that literally takes 45 seconds?

No. That’s not doable for us. And it’s not fair, either. We’ve done this before. We know what to do. We’ve already done blood tests and temping and ovulation tests galore.

As soon as we were starting to get discouraged, a friend I’ve made through online communities mentioned that she and her wife do at-home IUIs.

While we’d always known that a lot of lesbian couples do ICI at home–you know, with the proverbial turkey baster–we hadn’t considered that doing IUI at home might be a possibility, too.

So, of course, I went into data-gathering mode: reading countless forum posts about the process, sourcing supplies, asking other lesbians for a step-by-step guide.

Let’s just say that there aren’t enough images of cervical openings on the interweb. C’mon, folks. Can we get more than a cartoon diagram of a women’s anatomy, please?

Sona wasn’t sold on the idea, but as it has become clear that we have limited options, she started to reconsider it. Tonight, she came home from work with a bag full of things to prick and prod and poke with. I sorted through each of them, mildly horrified. “What am I supposed to do with THIS?!” I asked.

After we put Finn to sleep, we had an exploratory session. That may sound a little sexy, but trust me: it wasn’t.

“I need to be absolutely certain I can find your cervical opening–and access it–before we do this with $1000 worth of sperm,” I insisted.

I won’t tell you every gory detail of the 30 minutes I spent playing OBGYN, but I will tell you the following:

1. Stirrups are useful, as it turns out.
2. I do not know how to work a speculum. What angle it should go in at. How widely it should be opened. I’m sure you can imagine Sona’s excitement at my having to figure all of that out through trial and error.
3. I feel faint when I see a part of the human body that no one should ever see.
4. The cervix has a mind of its own.

The whole ordeal was a comedy of errors. Truly, if Sona had let me video that shit–and I asked–we would already be millionaires.

Truth is, I thought I’d get in there, see a cervical open stretched wide from childbirth, and a blinking neon sign, buzzing “put baby juice in here.”

I didn’t. I caught a glimpse of the opening once, but then it disappeared. Where could it have gone, you ask? I wish I knew.

I knelt on our bedroom floor, flashlight in my mouth, and waffled between laughing hysterically and feeling completely discouraged. I had tears for lots of reasons.

Eventually, we gave up. If roles has been reversed, I wouldn’t have lasted half as long as Sona did. She’s a total beast.

I did a little more reading, and I am determined to go back in, tomorrow. Cervix, you will not defeat me!

Luckily, the wife of a doc Sona works with is an OB. Like, a real one. And she’s offered to help us out, if we need it.

The whole thing has been an unorganized mess. I just don’t feel like we are as prepared as I thought we were–not as prepared as last time. But, then again, Sona reminded me that we got pregnant with Finn about 12 hours before our sperm would have been a week old and no longer viable. We thought we had the timing all wrong, and we ended up with the little boy who has made my life.

So, I’m going to choose to have faith. In us, in a woman’s miraculous body, in the universe, and in my ability to wield a speculum, should we go that route.